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Once a trend of the 1930s and 40s, the fashion industry’s seemingly sudden rekindled interest in alligator leather is now just another barrier Fagan must overcome in his lifelong struggle to keep his chosen profession.
Fagan’s interest in the prehistoric beasts began when his father introduced him to the sport as a boy. Back then, the animals were considered an endangered species that could only be hunted if individual gators triggered nuisance complaints from citizens. Killing an alligator was a jail-time punishable offence, unless it had somehow intruded into a populated area and been labeled a pest. This made hunting these creatures something of a fringe hobby for those who had the guts and legal qualifications to face the toothy beasts.
Over the past three decades, Fagan has almost single-handedly revolutionized the trapping industry in Florida. He’s stuck with it through thick and thin. While any Floridian above the age of 18 can now apply for a $250 alligator trapper’s license, that wasn’t the case when Fagan first became involved with the sport. The door for alligator trapping to become a full-time venture was opened when the state finally allowed trappers to sell gator meat, which was an illegal commodity at the time. Fagan was a key factor in all these changes, even residing as president of the Florida Alligator Trappers Association for many years.
“When we first started this program,” Fagan says, “we had to bury all the meat. It was against the law to sell any, any, any part of that alligator. And they’d take you to jail. It wasn’t a ‘here’s a citation’ thing; you went to jail. We had to get the rules changed.”
With the support of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission, Fagan and his fellow trappers lobbied for legislation to permit the sale of meat. Almost every state in the union had specific laws banning the sale of alligator byproducts. The trappers lobbied in each individual state to shift legal jurisdiction concerning gator hunting to the federal government in order to unify the industry. This also legalized the sale of alligator teeth, heads and other body parts which could get manufactured into novelty items. Fagan says he viewed the old laws as archaic.
“If we’re gonna kill these things – if we’re gonna kill ‘em, we need to utilize every thing on that alligator,” says Fagan, tapping his fingers next to the alligator-foot pen holder on his desk.
And this isn’t a joke, folks. Fagan has a storage portable full of fine Italian-crated belts, hides, heads, watchbands, money clips, purses, wallets and checkbook holders. He also stocks the unexpected: alligator-foot key chains, jewelry boxes fashioned out of gator heads, jaw bone Scotch tape dispensers, finely sanded gator-skin dress shirts, gator-claw backscratchers, and even coat hangers made from the upside-down gator claws.
“There’s no sense in just killing something and wasting it. We tried to give it to the orphanages or anything just not to bury the stuff. But the way the law was written, we had to change the law first.”
Trappers now are allowed to claim and sell the skin of gators directly to wholesalers, rather than being required to use the state as a conduit for verification of correct trapping procedures. Florida’s alligator open hunting season occurs from late August to October. This means anyone with a trapper’s permit is allowed to openly hunt dense populations of gators on certain territories around the state. The activity has found a small but loyal subculture in Florida.
Fagan’s two sons now work as part-time alligator trappers. Being raised by a father in such a different line of business had lasting effects on the boys. They learned the ins and outs of the alligator wholesale trade at a young age.
“They learned how to skin gators,” Fagan says of his sons. “They learned how to process the meat.”
Fagan’s son, Mickey, accompanies his father on “private lands” hunts that can sometimes yield over 1,000 gators on a single piece of property during the regular hunting season. During his off-time from a day job as a correctional officer, he is a wholesaler of alligator meat to distributors nationwide. He has at least three staff members working part-time to delicately carve and trim the somewhat fatty alligator meat.
“To me the hides are a plus, they’re just extra,” says the younger Fagan, in reference to his father’s business. “I don’t sell nobody’s meat but mine. I will buy meat from different farms, but I buy it straight off the gator. The quality of meat that we got, I think is one of the best you can find. We don’t add nothing to it, we don’t soak it in no preservatives.”
It seems to be a consensus among gator trappers that the business can sometimes be more trouble than it’s worth. Traveling expenses and the economically volatile nature of the alligator hide trade are not the only monetary constraints trappers must endure. Biologists with expertise in wetlands ecology must be hired by the trappers at a pricey rate to conduct surveys of alligator populations on private lands. The yearly audits assure that a particular area has a sustainable alligator population adequate for hunting.
Steve Stiegler, a wildlife biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Alligator Management Program, is all too familiar with the hoop jumping required by trappers to successfully obtain permits. He is just one of 122 wildlife biologists in Florida certified to conduct large-scale gator tallies.
“We’re not necessarily setting goals as having some sort of effect on alligator populations,” Steigler says, “but we are monitoring a randomly selected group of water bodies throughout the state to determine if countywide harvesting is having any kinds of effects on the local alligator population.”
The last few years have brought an influx of alligator nuisance calls, as well as an increase in the number of hunters applying for permits. Steigler says that the number of permits the FWC issues does not necessarily coordinate with the number of alligators caught by the trappers.
“Nuisance alligator complaints have been going up recently and it is due to the increasing human population in Florida and essentially to the developments encroaching on alligator habitat,” Stiegler says. “Alligators stay in their natural habitat, although most developments put in retention ponds, which would not be considered natural habitat. An alligator does not know what is natural habitat and what isn’t natural habitat. They are going to behave like alligators wherever they are.”
Scot Barbon, 37, is relatively new to the alligator-hunting world but has come across many runaway gators during his relatively short career. He sees the activity as more of a hobby to supplement the income from his full-time gig at a landscaping business. Besides participating in the annual alligator hunting season, Barbon received his state-sponsored alligator nuisance trapper license about two years ago. The license allows him to respond to gator nuisance calls from citizens who are usually scared out of their gourds after spotting a scaly pest. He says nuisance complaints are received year-round, mostly from property owners who have spotted a wandering gator. He sells the hides and meat to the Fagans to support his rather unusual pastime.
“I got an 11-footer in the back of my truck, alive, right now,” Barbon says. “They come in pretty steady. Emergency calls, which means we have to be dispatched right away, they can average every month, a little bit more in March when the breeding season is. Its average is more in the first part of season when males are looking for mates and females are protecting their eggs.”
Permits, which allow trappers to enter private property in pursuit of a pesky gator, are faxed to Barbon’s house on a regular basis. The address and nature of the complaint are included so that the trapper can somewhat prepare for the capture situation. The largest alligator Barbon has snagged this year measured in at over 12 feet. He uses an oversized fishing pole with beef lures - which come from unmentionable regions of a sacrificial bovine - are great gator bait.
“Sometimes the alligator is right there,” Barbon says, “sometimes he’ll take the bait and you’ll catch him right away. Sometimes he’ll stare at you, and he’ll never come in and take the bait.”
Barbon has been called out on many nuisance complaints involving gators in a variety of scenarios – from pulling the scaled tormentors out of tight crawlspaces, private swimming pools and even off the scorching asphalt of Interstate Highway 4. Nuisance trappers become involved if a complaint is issued for an alligator over 4 feet in length - otherwise it’s the local animal control’s problem.
“If they’re in the water and they get beat up or run off by another alligator, they are gonna get up and walk and they are going to go look for new water so they wind up in someone’s yard,” Barbon says. “That’s how they wind up in the wrong places. We’ve had some hairy places to go in to.”
He says the $30 stipend for gas and expenses the state pays him per nuisance complaint barely allows him to break even for each call he accepts. But money isn’t the reason Barbon or most of the trappers hunt.
“All the trappers run out of money before the year’s up anyway,” Barbon says. “I really enjoy it. I can run around catching alligators. I also enjoy meeting the people. I would love to do it full time.”